by Jack McLean
Before heading home, I stopped by the student store at the Harvard Coop and bought a crimson Harvard sweatshirt. I knew that admission would be a long shot but was pleased that I had made a good showing. I had no way of knowing at the time that that article of clothing would become the only piece of civilian attire to accompany me throughout my entire tour in Vietnam. Even on long midsummer patrols through sweltering jungle, the souvenir of my visit to Cambridge that day found its way into the bottom of my pack when perhaps an extra canteen of water would have been a more prudent choice.
In the end, I decided that I would apply to two colleges—Boston University and Harvard. I was thrilled at the prospect of attending either and felt that I had a shot at each. Were I admitted, I would be spending the four years after my discharge in Boston. Nothing could have made me happier. I wondered how I would ever survive another year of boredom in Barstow, but put the thought out of my mind.
The unlikely possibility that I might be back in Brookline within the week with orders for Vietnam barely occurred to me.
12
EVEN IN THE EARLY EVENING, BARSTOW WAS BLAZING hot as I stepped off the bus from the Los Angeles International Airport. It had been a long trip from Boston, and I was beat. With a seabag slung from my shoulder, I made the trek up the hill to the battalion office to report in with the officer of the day.
“Lance Corporal McLean, Lance Corporal McLean,” he murmured as his finger scrolled down the duty roster. “Ah, Lance Corporal McLean, here you are.” The young lieutenant looked up for the first time, and his eyes caught mine in a knowing gaze. “Lance Corporal McLean, you are to report immediately to Sergeant Enderly in the battalion office. I believe he has your new orders.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The blood left my face, and my knees withered as I picked up my bag and turned to go. All manner of possibilities flew through my head as I walked across the parade deck to the battalion office. Perhaps I was going to Philadelphia, but it did not appear likely. Every marine was a basic rifleman, and there was a war going on.
Sergeant Enderly was matter-of-fact when I appeared at his door.
“Lance Corporal McLean reporting as ordered, Sergeant.”
“McLean,” he responded. “I’ve got you right here.” Piled carefully on the side of his desk were what appeared to be fifteen or twenty large envelopes all stamped with the familiar official ORDERS. THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS. He fingered down to the middle of the pile and produced the one with my name and service number clearly stamped on the cover. With aplomb, he stood and handed the envelope to me.
“Congratulations, Lance Corporal, you are getting the shit out of Barstow.” With that, he shook my hand in a manner that felt more sarcastic than congratulatory.
“Where am I goin’, Sarge?” I was sure I knew the answer, but I also didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of watching me rip open the envelope and try to decipher the Marine Corps mumbo jumbo of numbers and acronyms inside. Sergeants took a vicarious thrill in the misfortune of junior enlisted men.
“They’re going to make you a grunt and send you over,” he replied curtly. “Adios, motherfucker. Be sure to write.”
With that, he grinned and sat back down.
“Anybody else get orders?” I asked when I was again able to speak.
“Take a look,” he said as he pointed to the pile on his desk. “Every one of you guys is going. I’ve been passing out the good news all afternoon while you all come back from leave.”
Every one of us meant all of my supply school friends and then some.
“What about MacLeod, Sid MacLeod. Is he on there?”
“Yeah, he’s here, but he’s not due back for a few more days.”
“Thanks for nothin’, Sarge,” I said as I picked up my bag and headed back across the parade deck to the barracks.
Many of the other guys had returned from leave earlier in the day and had their orders out of the envelope and under intense scrutiny. They laughed a gallows laugh when they saw me enter with the large white envelope in my hand.
“0311,” I blurted. “Are we really all going over as 0311s?”
“Fuckin’-A right,” responded Tom Ferguson, a short fair-haired private from Nebraska. The others nodded in quiet agreement.
We all had been ordered to report to Camp Pendleton to retrain as grunts—basic infantrymen. Like so many of our brothers from Parris Island Platoon 3076, our orders too now read “0311 WESTPAC.” It seemed frighteningly real as I looked up and down the squad bay at the faces of my comrades to observe their initial reactions to being sent off to war, a war that was escalating rapidly, building to what would become the bloodiest twelve months of the conflict.
Our timing could not possibly have been worse.
Camp Pendleton was a huge mass of large dusty hills spattered by low brush on the Pacific coast north of San Diego. We were stationed about twenty miles from the main camp at Camp Horno, the center for Marine Corps combat infantry training. Except for the three Special Infantry Combat Retraining companies, of which I was a part, the camp comprised boot privates directly out of the United States Marine Corps Recruit Depot at San Diego.
We were housed, three thousand strong, in an ever expanding tent city that sprawled up the side of a hill to accommodate the ballooning Marine Corps troop levels in Vietnam. The area around the tents was devoid of growth and inches deep in dust baked by the unforgiving late summer sun. It was incredibly filthy. Yet I was ready to be back in the real Marine Corps. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed the structure and discipline.
The training was largely a repeat of what we had had at Camp Geiger. Here, however, we were all training to be 0311s and we were all going to Vietnam. We listened to our instructors more carefully, knowing that our lives now really would depend on our ability to read a compass and perfectly master each weapon. Yet, the more we learned, the less I felt I knew. I wondered to myself how in the world I would ever be ready in time to join a combat infantry unit in the thick of the shit.
The feeling was surreal.
Though unrelated to my training, two events occurred in the sporting world during my time at Pendleton that struck me. One was the five-hundredth home run by my childhood idol, Mickey Mantle. I had been alive for every one of those home runs—the first player about whom that could be said. I felt I was getting older.
The other was the decision by the World Boxing Association to strip Muhammad Ali of his world championship title because of his refusal to enter the military. It was increasingly apparent that the white-bread American idealism of the 1950s, so well represented by Mantle, was giving way to a more confusing time, when sports, race relations, and the war in Vietnam were all colliding in an enormous train wreck for the country. The signs were all there. Ali’s comment, when asked why he refused to be inducted, was, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.”
Come to think of it, neither did I.
13
STAGING BATTALION AT CAMP PENDLETON IN CALIFORNIA was the last stop for all marines ordered to Vietnam. Nearly six years to the day after sitting in the auditorium of Andover’s George Washington Hall for orientation, I again was massed with a group of peers listening to valuable advice about my future. This time I was most attentive, trying to soak up any small pearl that might later save my life.
Each United States Marine headed for Vietnam in 1967 was required to watch a training film during the final days prior to embarkation. It was titled Why Vietnam and featured, among others, President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. In it, they explained exactly why we were headed halfway around the world to a country few of us had ever heard of, to defend the United States of America against a growing ideology that fewer of us understood, let alone perceived as a threat.
“Why Vietnam,” Johnson began.
I’ve never forgotten it. Even then—in the summer of 1967, when we believed that we could win this war, when we believed
that our government was doing the right thing—even then, the film brought quiet laughs from many in the audience. Filmed eighteen months earlier, the celluloid propaganda already was out of date. The entire geopolitical situation in Vietnam, the United States, and, indeed, the world had changed, and changed dramatically. The war that I was heading to bore little resemblance to the war these men were discussing. The NVA were now an acknowledged power and arguably a superior force. Since the film had been made, 8,238 American boys had died. Not surprisingly, seven months later, Johnson’s complete mismanagement of the war would force him from office.
Why Vietnam, indeed.
During the film, Johnson and his crew spoke of the domino theory. That is to say, if Vietnam fell to the Communists, then, like a row of falling dominos, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, and God knew where else would ultimately fall as well. It was the middle of the cold war. The stakes were high. Around the world, missiles with atomic warheads bulged in their silos, itching for ignition. The Russians were Communists and bad. The Chinese were Communists and bad, but not friendly with the Russians, which made it confusing. The North Vietnamese, North Koreans, and Cubans were all Communists. Though the situation (save Cuba) had remained static for fifteen years, the United States of America had decided to draw the line in Vietnam. Unfortunately, as we would all learn later, the reasons that President Johnson outlined as causes for the invasion of South Vietnam were entirely fabricated.
One of the reasons for the war stemmed from an August 2, 1964, incident in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam. That evening, the North Vietnamese Navy allegedly launched several unprovoked torpedo attacks on the U.S. destroyer Maddox, said to be on routine patrol. Two days later, after another alleged attack, President Johnson went on national TV to announce that he had ordered retaliatory action against the gunboats and supporting facilities in North Vietnam. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution—the closest thing there was to a declaration of war against North Vietnam—sailed through Congress on August 7, 1964, with dissent from only Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon and Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska. The resolution gave congressional authorization for the commander in chief to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” It was to expire “when the President shall determine that the peace and security of the area is reasonably assured.…”
President Johnson had addressed Congress two days before, outlining his four reasons for escalation in Vietnam:
America keeps her word. Here as elsewhere, we must and shall honor our commitments.
The issue is the future of Southeast Asia as a whole. A threat to any nation in that region is a threat to all, and a threat to us.
Our purpose is peace. We have no military, political, or territorial ambitions in the area.
This is not just a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity. Our military and economic assistance to South Vietnam and Laos in particular has the purpose of helping these countries to repel aggression and strengthen their independence.
The actual attacks were never proven. Most historians believe they never took place. In fact, the Maddox had been engaged in aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers—in sync with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese Navy. The attacks were part of a deliberate campaign of increasing military pressure on the North.
But there were no gunboats. There was nothing there but black water and American firepower. Later the following year, it is said that Johnson admitted, “For all I know, our navy was shooting at whales out there.”
Most do agree, however, that had it not been the Gulf of Tonkin incident, it would certainly have been something else. The United States was eager to draw the line against Communism and decided that Vietnam was the place to do it. Johnson had, in fact, drafted the resolution several months prior to the alleged attack on the Maddox. He had been waiting only for an event to trigger it.
As United States Marines, we cared little about politics or ideology. The actual cause was of little concern. Our commander in chief was sending us into harm’s way for whatever reasons he saw fit. That was good enough for us. The less confusing the mission, the more focused our performance. “Semper Fi, do or die” was our mantra. We were going to go get us some gooks.
The “line” that Johnson thought he was drawing in Vietnam had been literally drawn fifteen years earlier. As a result of the Geneva Accords, the century-old French occupation of Vietnam ended in 1954. The country was partitioned at the 17th parallel of latitude. South Vietnam became the Republic of Vietnam and North Vietnam became the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. In the post-World War II world of realpolitik, not unlike partitioned Korea a decade before, the North immediately cozied up to the Chinese and the USSR. The South allied with the United States.
Ho Chi Minh, the premier of the North and the driving force behind the expulsion of the French a decade earlier, and his top aide, General Vo Nguyen Giap, the military genius responsible for the humiliating annihilation of the French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, did not want Vietnam divided. Although the Geneva Accords had called for reunifying elections in 1956, an escalating dispute between South Vietnamese premier Ngo Dinh Diem and Ho Chi Minh allowed the date to pass. Ho Chi Minh had begun to execute his own plan for reunification that did not involve discussions with South Vietnam, the United States, or anyone else.
The American buildup in Vietnam began with several thousand military advisers that were sent in the early 1960s during the administration of President John F. Kennedy. The first major escalation took place in 1965 when a major force of marines made an amphibious landing just south of Da Nang on the northern coast of South Vietnam. By 1967, in an effort to interdict the flow of NVA troops from the North, major elements of the marines moved to positions along the 17th parallel, just south of the demilitarized zone that separated North and South Vietnam. One such position was a barren outpost called Con Thien. As the northernmost outpost in South Vietnam, Con Thien was in easy range of North Vietnamese artillery and troops.
Several months later, the defense of this small hamlet would become my first assignment in Vietnam.
During the six weeks prior to my arrival in country in the fall of 1967, North Vietnamese army gunners conducted one of the most intense artillery barrages in history, raining as many as nine hundred rounds of big artillery and mortar shells a day onto Con Thien—not a very big piece of real estate. The U.S. response included at least five thousand artillery shells and one thousand tons of bombs dropped daily from B-52S. The siege ended as the monsoons began and the North Vietnamese reportedly moved to higher ground.
General William C. Westmoreland, the American commander, called Con Thien “a Dien Bien Phu in reverse.” He went on to say that Con Thien represented a U.S. victory, that the marines had taken the best that the Communists could throw at them, had held their own, and had fought back valiantly and effectively. It was, of course, an early instance of what became the American strategy in Vietnam: Declare victory and move on.
In retrospect, Con Thien turned out to be one of our first major blunders of the war. Had we learned nothing from the French? The Battle of Dien Bien Phu, fought in the spring of 1954, was the climactic battle of the First Indochina War between the French and Vietnam’s Communist revolutionary Viet Minh. The battle ended in a massive French defeat that effectively ended the war.
During the battle, the French infantry had garrisoned themselves in the seemingly impregnable valley in northwestern Vietnam. It never occurred to them that the diminutive Vietnamese soldiers might be capable of hauling not only themselves but major artillery pieces to the top of the surrounding ridges.
Lesson one: Never underestimate the Vietnamese.
Lesson two? See lesson one.
A third lesson derived from the disasters at both Dien Bien Phu and Con Thien should have been to never again garrison large numbers of troops in a single po
sition where they could become sitting ducks for enemy forces. This lesson, like the first two, had yet to be learned by the American commanders.
With the end of the siege of Con Thien, incredibly—almost incomprehensibly—the United States began the buildup of a small base in the foothills to the west. Khe Sanh lay strategically at an outlet of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the North’s major supply route. Alas, Khe Sanh also lay within easy range of the big North Vietnamese guns at Co Roc, Laos. The stage was being set for another major attack by the North Vietnamese on a stationary American target. It would come in the winter and spring of 1968 with a siege that would last 177 days.
Elements of the history outlined in the propaganda film Why Vietnam were familiar to me. In 1957, my parents had traveled to Vietnam on business and had been fascinated by the country and its people. I sat through hours of home movies of the Tet celebrations in Saigon, the endless rice paddies in the countryside, and the enormous rubber plantations controlled by wealthy (mostly foreign) landholders. Our home had numerous Vietnamese artifacts. The fact was, however, that to a United States Marine on his way to Vietnam in 1967, the history meant little. We were marines. They were gooks. We were good. They were evil. We had God on our side; they worshipped something weird.
We were trained to kill.
They were trained to kill.
This we had in common.
Late in October, we were informed that our flight would leave from San Bernardino early on the morning of November fifth. On the evening of November fourth, I found an available pay phone and made my last telephone call home. My parents tried to be positive. I tried to be positive. Neither side was convincing. I recall no genuine words of spirit or encouragement from my father, although he certainly must have tried. My mother showed no audible sign of the horror that she must have felt.